He drank then said, “It’s complicated.”

“No, it’s not,” she said. “You’re bent, like me.” He looked at her closely. She was not angling to get him angry. She was simply speaking the truth as she saw it.

“What are you talking about?”

“You can dress it up in those designer clothes you wear at the bar, and turn on the charm, but strip off all the clothes and the charm, and what lives underneath is raw and dark.” Her voice was flat and quiet. “You’re never going to really find yourself the way you’ve been going. You’re always going to feel restless and dissatisfied, until you realize that the games you’ve been playing don’t feed the animal that lives inside of you.”

“You’re full of bullshit,” he snapped. Her words bit him to the bone. He tried to push them away by scoffing at her, while the part of him that had torn loose and was running renegade ran harder than ever.

“Am I?” She stood and stretched with abandonment, as free and wild in her human skin as she was in her Wyr form. She looked down at him, and there was a strange expression in her gaze, something he’d never seen in her before. “There isn’t anything wrong with the darkness, you know,” she said, almost kindly. “It’s just as beautiful as anything else.”

He stared as she walked over to one of the tents, unzipped the flap and crawled inside. A muscle in his jaw twitched. He rubbed at his cheek to make it stop then finished off the scotch. There was no reason in the world not to.

Then, because there was no one to fight with, he crawled inside his own tent. He took off his boots, but kept the rest of his clothes on as he climbed into the sleeping bag. Within minutes, his own body heat had warmed up the bag and he was comfortable enough, at least physically.

Mentally was another matter. He stared at the shadowed ceiling of his tent until the fire outside died down. Then he closed his eyes and pretended to sleep while silence roared in his head.

Where it was so dark.

EIGHT

Morning brought sunshine and warmer temperatures. Quentin had his tent broken down, tarps folded and the last embers of the campfire stamped out by the time Aryal climbed out of hers. She stood staring down at the empty fire ring, her face blurred from sleep. He contemplated the sight sourly. While he had been staring at the ceiling of his tent, she had been sleeping like a baby.

She said, “I was going to make coffee.”

“Too bad,” he snapped. “We need to get moving.”

“So that’s how today is going to be, is it?” She made an exasperated I-give-up gesture, glared at him and took down her tent.

While he waited for her to finish, he opened up two cans of sausage and beans and ate the food cold. Soon after, Aryal did the same, grimacing as she swallowed her breakfast. They each packed what they could carry, the lightweight camping gear tied below their backpacks.

“Let’s go,” he said as soon as Aryal shouldered her pack and tightened the straps.

She gave him a dirty look. “I’m not going to hike all day with you when you’re in this kind of mood.”

She was talking about a mood. He rolled his eyes and put his hands on his hips. “You’re going to try to fly with that on your back?”

When Wyr shapeshifted, some magic inherent to the shift itself transformed whatever they wore along with them. The speculation was that it had something to do with how Wyr defined their own personal space, but the shapeshift didn’t work for special loads like the backpack.

She shrugged. “I can carry it. We’re headed southwest, right?”

“Yes,” he said, his tone short. He knew he was being an ass, but he couldn’t seem to stop himself. “See the ridge at the top of those foothills? Follow that as it curves along the range. The passageway to Numenlaur will be close to where that ridge ends.”

“Right.” She didn’t bother with more conversation. She shapeshifted, her wings flaring into existence on either side of the pack straps.

“Aryal,” he said.

She paused to look at him, one sleek, black eyebrow arched.

“Don’t go so far as to land at the passageway without me. The Elves that Ferion sent to the guard the passageway are stressed and isolated. They’ve lost friends and family, and they haven’t had any news for weeks about how things are going in Lirithriel. Wait for me to get there before you do anything.” He paused, gritted his teeth and added, “Please.”

“Understood.” She turned away from him and launched.

Quentin watched her gain altitude. She was in her element in the air, everything about her flight graceful and full of power. He couldn’t believe she had actually chosen to leave rather than argue with him. It seemed unlike her.

He rubbed his face, struggling with contradictory emotions. As abraded as he felt this morning, her presence could only be like salt in a wound. But he was still annoyed with her for being able to leave so effortlessly. He wanted to pick a fight with her. She had said some pretty goddamn presumptuous things last night, and he took exception.

The silence was pretty peaceful though.

If he had been human, the hike to the passageway would take a couple of days, and much longer if a snowstorm blew in. He couldn’t get there as fast as Aryal could by flying, but he could still make the journey quicker than humans could.

He took off jogging at an easy, ground-eating pace. Within a half an hour, he was so hot, he had to stop and strip off his jacket and sweater. He folded them up and used them as padding for the backpack, which he slipped back on. Once he was certain the shoulder straps wouldn’t chafe his skin, he resumed jogging.

The clouds that day were little more than filmy swathes of white, like transparent silk across the ice blue sky. The late winter sun was bright, pale gold on the muted greens and browns of the forest. The deciduous trees were leafless, allowing for him to see further in dense areas, but the evergreens were thick and vibrant.

He could pick up speed with more surety of his footing in the rolling meadows, but the uneven paths through the forest were slick with melted snow and damp moss. There he could only manage the steady, careful jog. Then he reached a point where the paths didn’t go, and he had to strike out on his own.

Throughout the morning, he brooded. Contrary to what Aryal had said the night before, he wasn’t anything like her. She had assumed that he wasn’t facing some kind of internal truth about himself, and that wasn’t the case.

He didn’t think that the darkness that lived at his core was wrong, or evil. He didn’t try to deny or hide from what was inside of him.

He tried to protect everybody else from it.

He knew what kind of strength he had, and he knew that he had dangerous attributes. So had his father, who had seen him trained from an early age, both in magical and martial arts. His father’s goal had been to avoid him becoming a loose cannon, with too much ability and not enough skill. Quentin had kept up with the training when he reached adulthood because the push and strain appealed to his aggressive nature.

The result was that he could kill with a single blow. Breaking a couple of bones was even easier, especially if his sex partner were a human.

But if Aryal wasn’t on target with what she had said, why did he still feel so restless and dissatisfied?

At midday he reached the ridge. He followed along the edge until he came to a lake, where he decided to stop. He had burned off his breakfast and then some a long while ago. He drank his fill from the bone-numbing cold water. The lake was such a deep blue, it looked like a huge sapphire rested in the depths underneath the surface.

Then, instead of taking the time to set up a fire ring and cook, he opted to do what he had done that morning, which was open up a couple of cans of food and eat the contents cold. It wasn’t appetizing, but it was fuel. He was looking forward to a hot meal that night, though.

He sat on the large trunk of a fallen tree as he ate. His body gradually cooled, but the light breeze still felt good on his sweaty skin. The temp was probably in the midforties, but he didn’t plan on stopping long enough to cool down to the point where he would want to shrug on his sweater again.

A shadow fell over him. He looked up. Aryal coasted on a thermal overhead. She wheeled and came in for a landing, then shapeshifted and walked over to him. Her color was high, and she looked more vital than anything else on the landscape, an intense concentration of energy and physicality.

She had found somewhere to stash her pack, because she was no longer carrying it. Her gaze fell to his bare chest and lingered. He turned away and snapped at the last of his food, swallowing it down without really chewing.

Aryal sat beside him, drew up her legs and wrapped her arms around her knees. “You’re making good time,” she said. “There’s a hunter’s cabin that I think you can reach by nightfall, if you push.”

A hunter’s cabin would be shelter in the form of at least four walls and a ceiling, and probably a fireplace too. Hunters’ cabins were rarely large, luxurious places. They would be lucky if there was more than one room. It meant sharing a confined space with her again. He heaved a sigh that was halfway to a growl. “We’ll see.”

She tilted the toes of her boots up and looked at them. “I found a passageway.”

Irritable at his meal that had been filling yet not satisfying, and in the mood for something sweet, he had begun to dig in his pack for an energy bar. He frowned at her. “You found a passageway?”

She grimaced and lifted a shoulder. “It seems to be in the right location, but I didn’t land like you asked, and I don’t know that it’s the Numenlaur passageway.” She looked at him sidelong. “Thing of it is, I didn’t see any Elves nearby, so I’m not sure.”

He considered that as he tore the wrapper off his bar and took a bite. “Did you catch sight of a camp?”

She shook her head. “Nothing. It couldn’t be the second passageway, could it? The one that leads to the Lirithriel Other land?”

He chewed thoughtfully. He wouldn’t have thought she would have flown that far off course, but just in case, he asked, “Can you sketch where you found it?”

She slipped off the tree trunk, found a stick and started drawing in the mud at the edge of the lake. “I followed your directions. Here’s the ridge. It curves around the edge of this outlying mountain that sort of sticks out from the rest of the range like a stubby thumb.”

He lifted his eyebrows. She certainly had a unique perspective from the air. He said, “Okay.”

“The ridge ends here, in a deep big ravine.” She slashed at the mud. “It’s actually bigger than a ravine, more like a canyon. That’s where the passageway is.”

“That sounds right,” he said. “Remember, I’ve never seen the passageway myself, but that’s pretty much what Ferion described. The other passageway is a good fifteen to twenty miles farther on south from there.”

She looked up at him. “So where are the Elven guards?”

“Elves are very good at blending into their environment,” he said as he finished the bar. He rinsed out the empty cans, crushed them underneath the heel of one boot and tucked the metal back into his pack.

Aryal stood tapping her foot. “I know that.” She scowled. “Okay, so maybe I didn’t actually set both feet on soil, but I flew down really low, right over the tops of the trees and sometimes in between them. I don’t think the guards are there, Quentin.”

He gave her a long look. He didn’t waste time calling her on her legalistic thinking, just focused on her story instead. He also didn’t bother asking her if she had seen any signs of an old campsite. When the Elves broke camp, they removed all traces of their visit on the land. If they had been there and departed, they wouldn’t have left any signs for someone to find.

“So either I found the wrong passageway …” she said.

He glanced again at the map drawn in the mud. “You didn’t.”

“Or for some reason the Elves felt the need to cross over into Numenlaur,” she finished.

“I guess they might have,” he said. “I wonder what could have caused them to cross over, and if they did, why didn’t they leave someone on guard at this end, like they had been ordered?” His shoulders were not happy about his picking up his pack again. He paused before he slipped it back on. “There’s a third possibility. Maybe they never arrived.”

“Whatever the possibilities, they lead to just two questions,” she said. “Where are the Elves now, and why aren’t they where they are supposed to be?” She focused on him. “Stop that. Take your pack off.”

He asked suspiciously, “Why?”

“I’ll take it.” She held out her hand. “You’ll make better time without it. If you can change, you’ll definitely reach the cabin by tonight. The passageway is just a couple of hours’ hike beyond that point. We can be there by mid-morning.”

He paused as he thought about that, studying her face. If he handed over his pack, Aryal would have all of the supplies along with the car keys.

Even if she decided to do something pissy, like take off with everything, the theft wouldn’t hurt him, only inconvenience him. He knew his survival skills were more than good enough to handle the terrain, and he would keep his weapons on him.

He had hesitated a moment too long. Her eyes narrowed in either disgust or impatience. She said, “Don’t be stupid. I thought we were at least past that point.”

“Fine,” he said. “Hold on a moment.”

Along with handguns and knives, they had both brought short swords, the kind that could be stowed along the length of the inside of their packs. Legally, they could have brought long swords, but those tended to be more trouble than they were worth on long airplane flights.